This year’s Tour de France Femmes was arguably the best of the five editions since the race reappeared on the calendar, but what’s next for the women’s peloton?
The women’s sport has seen a huge expansion since the Tour’s return in 2022, and the hallmark race brings in new fans and followers each summer, but sometimes the attention on the sport can fade slightly once the winner has packed away her yellow jersey and headed home.
However, there’s so much going on in the women’s peloton beyond the Tour as the season continues, be it the rest of the WorldTour season, the upcoming World Championships, or the transfer market.
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So what have we got to look forward to in the remaining weeks of 2026, and which stories can you expect to see filling the pages here at Cyclingnews? From transfers to big races still to come, here’s six compelling storylines to keep an eye on for the rest of this year.
As the Tour de France Femmes finds its place in our collective memories, thoughts naturally turn to the next races where we can see the top riders competing, and the calendar has not been kind, with only nine days of WorldTour racing left this season. Despite this, we only have to wait until next week to see some of the Tour de France stars in action again.
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The Tour of Britain Women starts on Wednesday, August 19, with Tour de France stage winner Kim Le Court-Pienaar (AG Insurance-Soudal) set to return after winning the opening stage last year. Also listed is green jersey winner Lorena Wiebes and her SD Worx-Protime teammate Lotte Kopecky, and they’re not the only big names. A punchy course with something for everyone is what has attracted such a stellar field, and we’re almost certain to witness five days of entertaining racing.
Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) is one of a number of stars slated to start the Tour of Britain Women (Image credit: Getty Images)
The final European race on the WorldTour calendar comes at the end of August, on the rolling roads around Plouay with the one-day Classic Lorient Agglomération, which always provides tense, unpredictable racing and a good start list. After that, the WorldTour takes six weeks off before heading to China for the Tour of Chongming Island. With its bridges for climbs and nailed on bunch sprints it can be a bit of a snooze-fest, but new regulations around teams’ attendance at races means we should have better teams and a higher level of competition.
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The paucity of top-level racing after August somewhat undermines much of the momentum the Tour de France bestows on the sport. However, there are reasons for it, with the Tour de Romandie Féminin being cancelled due to a lack of funds and the Simac Ladies Tour dropping down the race hierarchy and becoming the Eneco Tour Women.
Luckily, we do have a series of second-tier races coming up with the Pointe du Raz Ladies Classic, La Choralais Fourmies, GP Region Stuttgart, while the Italian pair of Giro dell’Emilia Internazionale and Tre Valli Varesine are always excellent competitive events.
And of course there are the World Championships, this year held in Montréal in September.
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Can Demi Vollering finally win a rainbow jersey?
Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) has won two Tours de France, the Giro d’Italia Women and Vuelta Femenina, and a host of top Classics. She’s the sport’s leading name, arguably its best climber, up there with the leading time trialists, and she even has the punch to mix it in a sprint finish, but she’s never won the rainbow jersey. Could this be her year?
She’s come close more than once, improving each year from 56th place in her 2019 debut. She was seventh in 2021 and has never finished outside the top 10 since. She was second to Lotte Kopecky in Glasgow in 2023, but when Kopecky won again in Switzerland the following year, the Belgian out-witted Vollering in the final before out-muscling her in the sprint.
But Vollering is a far more savvy rider these days. Gone are the moments of poor positioning and she is far less willing to do all the work, but there are still moments when she plays the game and loses.
She’s won almost everything there is to win, but can she finally take the rainbow jersey? (Image credit: Getty Images)
Last year she was part of a group of favourites that stared each other into the abyss, as Magdeleine Vallieres took the jersey. More recently, on Mont Ventoux during the Tour de France Femmes, she and Marlen Reusser concentrated only on each other, paying the price as Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM) rode away to stage victory and into yellow.
At 180km, this year’s Worlds course is the longest in the race’s history, more than 120km further than when Elsy Jacobs became the first woman to win the rainbow jersey in 1958, and three times the length of the last women’s World Championships held in Montréal.
The opening 60km are almost flat, with the vast majority of the 2,400m of vertical ascent coming during eight laps of a lumpy closing circuit, which is sure to make for a tough, attritional final. Whether it’s a pure climber’s course or not is open to conjecture, but Vollering seems to fit the bill any way you look at it.
Kate Courtney has long been a star of the mountain bike world, the American winning a host of the most illustrious off-road races, including multiple US titles, Cape Epic, the overall World Cup and two rainbow jerseys. At last year’s Leadville Trail MTB 100 she smashed the course record en route to taking the title at her first attempt.
However, rather than returning to Leadville to defend that title and take on the amended route, Courtney is beginning a new challenge on the road. She made her debut in UCI-level road racing earlier this year, riding for the US national team at the Tour Feminin in Czechia, finishing 13th overall and winning the final stage in the 2.2 level event.
After switching from MTB to road what can Kate Courtney do? (Image credit: Getty Images)
After adding another stars and stripes jersey to her collection at the US Road Nationals in June, the 30-year-old signed with Demi Vollering’s FDJ team, taking personal sponsor Red Bull with her, on a deal taking her through to the end of 2028, past her home Olympic Games.
While some riders find the switch to the road difficult, that has not been the case for Courtney, whose programme has been greatly helped by the team’s approach. After riding two lumpy, 1.1 races in France, guiding teammate Eva van Agt to victory in one of them, she headed to Belgium, essentially on a mission to learn, riding three kermesses, winning two and finishing second in the other.
A flick through Courtney’s Instagram illustrates that she knows how much she still has to learn, and we will see just how much that is next week when she starts the Tour of Britain Women. Whatever she has to learn, Courtney is clearly born to race bikes and her progress on the road will be fascinating to follow.
Will anyone topple Lorena Wiebes?
We’ve known it for a while now, but if a race finishes in a bunch sprint and Lorena Wiebes is there, the SD Worx-Protime rider is almost certain to win. She is without doubt the best and most consistent sprinter in the peloton. We know it, her team know it, and her rivals certainly know it too.
But, like all things, her dominance is certain to end sometime – the big question is when.
This year does not yet count as a vintage season for Wiebes. Last year she added 25 victories to her burgeoning palmarès; this year there have only been 15 so far. And we’ve even seen her lose a bunch sprint for the first time in almost two years as Carys Lloyd (Movistar) won the Ronde van Brugge. And of course, there was that disqualification from the Giro d’Italia for a bike weight infringement after crossing the line first.
She hardly seems vulnerable, though – just look at her two stage wins at the Tour de France, both of which included more than 1,500m of vertical ascent, and both of which were conquered with relative ease.
Will Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek) be the one to break Lorena Wiebes’ winning spell? (Image credit: Getty Images)
Other than her aura of invincibility, another thing working in Wiebes’ favour is the lack of form among her rivals. Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek) has struggled this year, Lara Gillespie (UAE Team L’IMAD) hasn’t yet clicked, and after a promising start to 2026, Charlotte Kool (Fenix-Premier Tech) has tailed off drastically, failing to finish the Tour after finishing OTL on Ventoux.
With a couple of Tour of Britain stages likely to finish in a bunch kick, the other sprinters have chances of toppling Wiebes in the coming days, and the Tour of Chongming Island routinely provides three sprints. Away from the top tier, La Choralis Fourmies is one for the fast women and the Eneco Tour Women will have multiple chances. But these are chances for Wiebes too and no one would bet against her adding significantly to her 133 wins.
“There will be a point that I will be beaten in a sprint and probably the media thinks a lot about that,” she told us at the UAE Tour, where she won three stages. “But then for me just focus on the good things and keep on improving and keep on being the best version that I can be.”
Where will some of the top names land?
Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney and Paula Blasi were two of the biggest stars of the Tour de France Femmes, but could be two of the biggest names on the transfer market this season, too.
After winning Amstel Gold Race and the Vuelta earlier in the year, Blasi finished fifth on her debut at the Tour, one of three riders from UAE Team L’Imad in the top 10. This despite media questioning of not only the squad’s leadership on the road, but also the Spaniard’s continued presence on the team.
There has been speculation over Niewiadoma-Phinney’s future too, with her contract at Canyon-SRAM expiring at the end of this year and a move away apparently on the cards.
She’s been with the German team since 2018, having begun her career at Rabobank-Liv in 2013, and has flourished there, and while she is not a regular winner, when they come, her victories tend to be huge statements. A move away would be a huge loss for the team, but she’s the real deal and will be an excellent addition to whichever team she joins.
Paula Blasi has ridden for UAE Team L’IMAD this year, but where will she be in 2027? (Image credit: Getty Images)
On the other hand, the inexperienced Blasi is more of a risk for any team willing to buy her out of her contract at UAE, which officially expires at the end of 2027. After starting her career in triathlon and duathlon, she burst onto the cycling scene last year following a season racing at club level in her native Spain.
Moving to UAE’s development team, she was soon promoted to the WorldTeam, winning the mountain time trial at the Tour de Romandie Féminin. This year her development has continued, with Amstel Gold Race her own statement win, followed by the general classification at the Vuelta.
There have been plenty of other wins since then too, and she’s clearly a huge talent, but whether she can justify the prospect of being the sport’s first million-Euro woman remains to be seen.
After such a brilliant 2026 Tour what will next year’s route serve us?
This year’s Tour was a microcosm of the women’s sport itself. At the start of the week Demi Vollering was the nailed-on favourite to win overall and though she achieved that, wow, was it exciting.
I don’t believe in constantly judging women’s cycling against men’s cycling, but it’s worth noting that five riders wore yellow across the nine stages of the Tour de France Femmes against the three during the 21 stages of the men’s Tour. The sprint days were barely that, and other than the Mont Ventoux day, the rest of the stages consisted of punchy days, the route certainly contributing to the spectacle.
So what of next year?
The route for the 2027 race will be revealed, as usual, alongside the men’s in late October. What we do know is that the opening stages will be held in the north of England, which will hopefully provide some lumpy stages through the Peak District before the team time trial in London.
However, we’ll have to wait to see what happens when the race returns to home soil. After such a successful 2026 organisers might be tempted to try a repeat, packing the race with punchy stages of varying degrees, but variety is key. Like last year there need to be editions with more than one visit to the high mountains, some seasons with a time trial and some without.
Tour de France Femmes race director, Marion Rousse will reveal the 2027 route in October (Image credit: Getty Images)
What they should not do, and what they have already acknowledged, is make the race too hard.
“We can make the race harder, but do we want to? Not necessarily,” race director Marion Rousse said at the conclusion of this year’s event. “I don’t favour constantly raising the level of difficulty, but that’s a personal point of view.
“I’ve had experience as a TV media analyst and sometimes, when it’s too tough, that kills off the suspense because riders just look at each other until the last climb.”
We’ll let you know what they decide.
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